Currency

There is a membrane between the conscious world and the unconscious one. A viscous film that keeps the nightmares from crawling from the dark into the light, prevents the horror from seeping through the cracks. Rowen woke with the feeling of gauze unsticking. Malignant dreams clutched at her with bloody fingers as the shadows resolved themselves from monsters into furniture. The metallic noise of the machine at her side kept time with her pulse and she fretted a moment at the sound of it. Her left arm wrapped in bandages, she felt for the nurse call button with her right and waited. Agonized floating near the ceiling, the swish and whoosh of the door sliding open, jumbled blocks of voices falling into piles on the floor.

“She shouldn’t – “

“No.” Piercing the dripping IV bag, the pop of the needle could have been the membrane reclaiming Rowen, monster shadows returned to the room consuming the light.

When the financial system, a monolithic creature stitched together on the backs of the poor with hollow bones and sinews of pure deceit, crashed and shattered, we were all told that it was temporary. Then the systematic emptying of the banks began. Beyond looting, the utter ransacking of every store and warehouse eviscerated American life, slicing it open and leaving the entrails spilled throughout the streets. Blood on the hands of thousands.

Light that smelled of rubbing alcohol and paint drifted across a room the color of dust. The small man stood with his back to Rowen, staring through the fissures of the window blinds intently. Seeming to sense the opening of her eyes, he turned, now a black silhouette against blades of glare.

“Hello Rowen, I’m Dr. Adams, do you remember me?” his voice rippled as if filled with water and flowing over pebbles. Rowen thought it was intended to sooth, it didn’t.

“You were going to remove my curse. Fix me.” Shifting under the pale green sheet, Rowen struggled to pull her left arm from the crumpled linens. Layered gauze mummified her forearm, blood seeping through in places. “Is it gone?” she demanded. The doctor walked to the foot of her bed and placed a placating hand upon her knee, seeming to reassure her and hold her in place at the same time.

“The procedure was mostly successful…” he hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “However, another surgery will be required to finish the job.” His words were stones that cracked against Rowen’s skull.

“What do you mean?” she screamed, her rage filling the room with red. “You promised to make me better!” The frustration of the last nineteen years ruptured within her veins, cleaving through the drug-fueled fog. She had saved everything, paid it all to be beautiful – she was a leper without this thing removed, no one would even speak to her! She jerked at the suddenly strangling bedding.

This time they bypassed the IV and the needle slipped directly into her flesh, her thoughts scattering like leaves in a storm that has lost its center of gravity.

We were a snake feasting upon our own tail. Without supplies there were no workers, without workers there was no transportation, without transportation there were no supplies. It took years and the deaths of tens of thousands to correct this course. Mankind’s tenacity is an astonishing thing made of grit and sweat and malleable morals. There were two camps. The ones that cared only about surviving the moment, willing to steal and rape and sell anything and anyone; and the ones that clung to some idea of species, humanity clutching at shadows of decency while attempting to find the threads that might pull us back together. Both groups would kill, but one for sport, the other when necessary.

When Rowen awoke, it was to the golden glow that only belongs to Sunday afternoons. The room was large, and the chatter of a radio scratched lines of thought across the wall on the far side, a little girl crouched in front of it like an anorexic spider. She wore an eye patch and clawed fitfully at the nap of the carpet with fingers too thin to hold flesh. Rowen lay in a bed next to a large window that overlooked a park of some kind. She didn’t remember such a thing on the grounds, but perhaps this was the rear of the building. The room also contained a small piano and shelving unit full of books. Rubbing the glue from her eyes, she watched as the door opened and a middle-aged couple swept in to usher the girl from her radio perch, surreptitiously sneaking glances at Rowen. The door clicked shut behind them after the woman smiled softly at her.

An echo of distant voices drew Rowen’s attention to another door, this one had a lock on it with a keypad that ticked six times before it swung inside on silent hinges.

“Ahhh, I see our Rowen is awake!” Dr. Adam’s voice was stronger this time, filling the room with pedigreed confidence. The nurse at his side wore a name tag that read ‘Heather’, but Rowen thought she looked more like an Alison. Or a Gwen. She held a clipboard and smiled widely at Rowen with dingy teeth as she shuffled over to stand beside the bed. The doctor perched on the opposite edge of the mattress, his weight a bird. “Rowen,” he said, locking his fingers together over the knee of his crossed legs, “we were successful in removing most of the birthmark from your arm, but there was some of the darker, more leathery tissue that we had to leave as it was rigidly connected to large blood vessels.” He shifted and ran a hand over his forehead. “We will easily take care of this with one more procedure and you will be forever free from your curse!” his beaming smile a synthetic reassurance. Rowen felt the air thin as her heart raced.

“I have no more money, I cannot afford another surgery!” Volcanic tremors shook her shoulders as the edges of the sunny room began to blur. Panic has a flavor; it tastes of fear and salt and the color grey.

There was a third camp, an elite. The foundation of this section of society was built upon seclusion, renewable energy, military firepower, and medicine. They were a myth, a parable to be used to encourage the children and a dream to add color to bleak black and white nights. As we watched women die with babies stuck inside their bodies, simple broken ankles that led to the fetid stink of gang green and the mind scrape of the screams when home amputation was attempted, it became clear that medical care was nearly as important as food.

Nurse Heather looked pointedly at the heart shaped locket hanging from a silver chain around Rowen’s neck. Rowen reached up and tucked it safely beneath the hospital gown again, cold but familiar against her skin.

“Absolutely not,” she nearly hissed, “it’s the last thing I’ve got from my sister who never came home after the Fall. My parents are dead, my sister gone, you will not take this!” Dr. Abram’s sympathetic gaze rested on her own and he patted her shoulder as he stood.

“Not to worry, Rowen, I’m sure we can work something out.” He took the clipboard from his nurse and flipped through the pages, muttering to himself as he read. Nodding as if to confirm his own thoughts, he smiled once more and headed toward the locked door. “You’ll have roommates this evening, do enjoy getting to know them!” and the soundless door slid shut.

Later, as the afternoon bled into night, a young man was led into the room and tucked into an empty bed, his twisted fingers a glaring visible hell. Rowen overheard the nurse telling him one day he would play the piano again, a concert to remember. Sneaking looks at that shriveled hand left Rowen pitying him for the assurances reeked of deceit. She rolled over and pretended not to hear when a woman who apparently had her foot run over by a car, was put into the bed beside her. They were a collection of broken things in a room at the end of the world.

The architecture of a society is a complicated mechanism but at its most basic level is money. Some way to pay for what you need. When there is a lack of a standard manufactured tender, there is bartering. If you can make, have, or do something of value, you might survive. If not, there was a mass grave in your future. In fact, those enormous landfills are still the thing of nightmares as the fields now planted above them are lauded for their productivity, putrescent fertility abounds.

The laceration of morning light sliced ribbons in the air. Rowen quietly drank the apple juice provided and watched the other patients navigate the waiting. It was like moving through water, this suspension masquerading as stasis. One by one they were collected. Beds rolled through mute doors, their masked escorts murmuring reassurances as the fluorescent lights flashed by overhead. The last thing Rowen remembered was the sound of plastic curtains pulled on metallic rollers above her.

Despite all of this, humanity had found its footing. Atop the decomposing flesh of others, we rose. The elite had needs and used their ‘charity’ to meet them. First to come back online were the hospitals. Care was available but payment was expected, mostly in the form of servitude, a child, or thing of beauty – heaven knows that the single greatest force in America aside from hunger, was vanity.

Awareness slid into her throat, a thick paste of impressions and sounds that ricocheted about. Reality swam in layers of ochre and brown, smelling of crusted blood and new upholstery. Rowen forced her eyes open as the beeping of the monitors accelerated, alerting the staff that she was awake. Soft shoes padded across the carpet of the large room and nurse Heather appeared once more hovering above her.

“There you are,” she murmured, looking vaguely hostile. “Took you a bit longer than the others.” She adjusted the covers and glanced at the clock. “I’ll tell the doctor you’re awake and he’ll be in shortly.” Her back blurred as she left. Rowen’s eyes drifted and she lay there, listening. The radio had been replaced by a small tv and once more the little girl was curled up on the floor, enraptured. The woman with crutches on the couch behind her was reading a novel and tapping her foot to the music. Groggily Rowen realized someone was playing the piano. She raised her hand to scratch her cheek and found it tangled in hair several inches longer than she remembered, and there was a bandage on her face. Mottled confusion ate at the edges of the room, an itch beneath her skin growing into a wave of dread that slowly poured into her stomach. Rowen placed her hand on her abdomen and then jerked the sheet down, there was a feeding tube attached.

“What in the hell…?” she struggled to sit up using just her right arm, the bed awkward and lumpy. The little girl turned to watch her, and Rowen stared back into two different colored eyes. The young man playing the piano also was watching as well as the woman on the couch. Shaking, horror grappling with disbelief, she wrenched the bandages off her arm and froze at the sight of her useless fingers dangling like wet paper from her wrist. The tendons had been removed. Ripping the sheet off Rowen already knew her leg ended just below the knee. The woman on the couch looked away as a keening filled the room, an animal sound of tormented anguish. Nurse Heather’s voice was smug when Rowen ran out of air.

“But look, honey, that hideous birthmark is all gone.”